That's desperation and a horror right up there with the "Saw" movies.
We, as a people, in MY country, forced a young woman to work right into the grave. We might as well be Pharoahs running the blocks right over anyone who weakens and falls.
Why is it we can give pharmaceutical giant Amgen 500 billion dollars for free in the cliff deal, but we can't find a way to let a helpless young woman die in peace?
no one says that you are entitled to any specific standard of living.
My family's sweat and blood, spilled in the defense of this great nation, says differently. My family has not held the funerals we have held to watch this nation's manufacturing base handed over to the very thugs our previous generation just got through fighting.
Not only is taking advantage of an exploited labor market immoral, since handing money to our sworn enemies is pretty much the definition of treason as well.
What if the users explicitly agreed to this spying in their rental contracts?
Basic Contract Law would disallow this. Contracts are only valid when they are legal, mutual and entered into freely by people capable of a "meeting of minds." Contracts between two people of unequal understanding are void on their face. This is why you can't make contracts with children, the intoxicated or people of unsound mind. This is why the Courts generally protect "unsophisticated investors" from financial cardsharps, and why they take a very dim view of certain types of auto dealers who try to sell cars "as-is." It doesn't even have to be an "unconscionable contract," though I would argue that this case certainly would be. Any contract that obviously has one party taking advantage of the other is void on its face.
Think of it as the "Fair Fight" Principle. The Courts would generally allow Tyson and Ali in their prime to square off and call it "good." They wouldn't allow me to step in the ring with either, even if I agreed to it, because the Courts should not be in the business of providing legal cover to homicide.
$320/month lease, $700/month mortgage. You'll lose money either to rental costs, or (mortgage interest + mortgage insurance + taxes - mortgage tax deductions). The deciding numbers would be at the end of 20 years, does the equity in the home exceed the value of the $380/month savings you've been banking and investing for 20 years? In some cities right now, the equity is more. In other cities, the investment account is more.
I suspect the poster is talking about a long-term auto lease, which is a notoriously poor financial decision, as opposed to renting a car for a few days.
The concept you're looking for is "hubris." The guy's ego was writing checks his productivity couldn't cash. I worked with a really talented kid fresh out of school a while back. He'd been a big fish in a small pond his whole life, and couldn't fathom a world where some people might have more talent than he did, and worse yet, might be talented in different ways.
He kept insisting he was the only one competent to get this done, and that done, and the other thing until he finally met an old man who let him try.
The crackup was pretty spectacular.
Last I heard, the kid was doubling down on a bad strategy. Not sure what it's going to take to get the kid far enough past his own ego to work with other people.
What good is this SW if it only works under extremely specific circumstances?
Well, for one thing, you can bill the living daylights out of the government agency for providing it. And since each specific circumstance will likely require its own special patch, you have a guaranteed revenue stream for years to come...
Two liters of soda carries in the neighborhood of 800 calories. The usual number quoted is that running burns about 100-120 calories per mile. Roughly speaking, you're gonna pay for that two-liter soda with a seven mile run.
Need to gain weight fast? One pound of fat = 3500 extra calories. Roughly, eight or nine liters or four six-packs (22 cans) of soda equal one pound. Drink a six-pack a day and you'll be a pound, pound and a half heavier by the end of the week. You'll be four or five pounds overweight by the end of the month. You can be grossly clinically obese by the end of the year, simply from drinking soda alone.
Now, yeah, I get personal freedom and, no, we shouldn't ban bacon and candy, but I have a lot of sympathy for the noise coming out of New York about banning soda. I was raised to think soda was basically "Water Plus," and the Coca Cola Company spent billions programming me to think "Coke Is It." I mean, good grief, we literally get our picture of Santa Claus from a Coca Cola ad, so deep is soda ingrained in American culture.
It took a ridiculous amount of effort as an adult to look at a can of soda and link that to feeling bad from poor health. It was ridiculous how hard it was to teach myself that I should look at a can of Coke and a cigarette the same way, since both would have roughly comparable deleterious effects on my health.
Some individuals would probably be just fine drinking 2L of sugar soda from plastic bottles if they're active enough to burn off the extra calories.
No one, nobody, is going to stay fine if they're drinking two liters of soda a day.
A meteor impact wiping out 80% of all species on the planet you could deem damaging to the ecosystem, it's still a natural occurence, life still finds a way and the world still turns.
Sure, on geologic timescales. Interestingly enough, it's the larger, more dominant predators most at risk to such an event. Know anyone at the top of the food chain you'd like to keep around?
Seriously though, if you don't define a meteor strike like the one that killed the dinosaurs to be a disaster, then the simple fact is that the word "disaster" holds no meaning for you. There is literally nothing up to and including the aforementioned "red giant" phase of the sun that will one day engulf the Earth that you find to be a problem.
China doesn't have an adversarial and independent press (though God knows it could be argued the US doesn't have one anymore either). When things like this happen, the best you're going to get are strangled, scattered reports in fitful sporadic bursts, as happened in our own (US) revolution.
Responsible journalism would involve a reporter going out to investigate the reports and interview the people on the scene. The government won't allow it. So now you're in a similar situation where the police get a call about a wife beater. They go to the accused man's house and find there's blood on his sleeveless t-shirt, they can hear sobbing inside, but he won't let them in the door. Suddenly you have to take those few scattered reports a lot more seriously.
Various students are reporting they've been pressed into service by a dictatorial government. The dictatorial government in question isn't allowing anyone to investigate their claims. The government's behavior in and of itself tends to corroborate the students' reports, especially given the previous history of the factory in question.
Students were pulled from their classes, forced to work 12-hour shifts, and punished if they protested or tried to leave. None of this was voluntary, and all of it highly illegal even by Chinese law. The students were paid a very nominal amount, but were billed for room and board which clawed that money right back to the factory, meaning this is a "Sixteen Tons" situation where the students didn't actually get paid.
As for the "work experience," it consisted of snapping parts together and filling boxes. The students were studying Law and English. The factory work had no educational value of any kind, not are any of the students getting the references or connections customarily associated with internships.
Are you getting this yet? The students were grabbed from school, shipped to the factory and made to work 12-hour shifts. No one had agreed to any of this. Anyone who talked back or tried to leave was punished.
The nicest label you can slap on this is "impressment," which is just a fancy way of saying slavery. So let me get this straight. A national healthcare plan is "enslaving doctors," but grabbing kids out of class and forcing them to work 12-hour shifts without pay is "valuable work experience?"
...and there are precious few of us old school conservatives left who remember "Rio Bravo." If you'd hold a rich man in jail despite deadly opposition because you believe in the Rule of Law, you're a John Wayne conservative.
If you oppose one man monopolizing the water and land rights in town, you're a John Wayne conservative. If you believe that we all -- even the drunks and the handicapped -- should work together toward a common good, you're a John Wayne conservative. If you believe even addicts and convicts deserve a second chance, you're a John Wayne conservative. If you believe Jesus died for our sins and that we're all undeserving of His grace, and that how we treat "the least of these" is how we treat Him, then you're a John Wayne conservative.
The problem is Paul Ryan's GOP thinks you're a pinko socialist.
Go ahead. Walk into a gathering of your fellow faux conservatives and say the following: "I believe that people who commit a crime should go to jail. Lying on a sworn court document is perjury. Any banker who 'robo-signed' documents should be in prison." Let me know how that goes.
Walk into your nearest Assembly of God church and try the following line: "I believe Christians should go, sell all that they have, give to the poor, and follow Him." Follow that up with a suggestion that Christians should spend most of their time among brawlers, whores and thieves (Peter, Mary, Zacchaeus). If you really want to wind them up, try quoting Barbara Ehrenreich describing our Lord as "a wine-guzzling vagrant," which is pretty much a direct quote from how Christ described himself. It's amazing how many of my brethren balk at that blunt and clever turn of phrase, and totally miss the scathing indictment she makes about our lack of Faith.
I spent my little boys years in Huck Finn territory, and I grew up among men with rough hands and hard lives. I spent my Sundays in literal clapboard churches on wooden pews. When the men I grew up with had time for a movie, it was usually John Wayne.
And I cannot reconcile the classic American values found in those movies with the Ebenezer Scrooge beliefs of the modern Republican party.
You and I probably have similar blue-collar backgrounds and work histories, and I have the scars on my back and face to prove it. We're not talking about kids there feeding the goats and collecting eggs. We're not talking about the double-bit ax I was handed at eight years old. We're talking situations closer to ones we had in America, where we sent small children into coal mines because it was cheaper to dig exploratory tunnels that could only fit little kids instead of a full-grown man. A lot of those little boys didn't make it out when their makeshift tunnels collapsed on them. Underage labor in China doesn't mean we sent the kid out under the Texas sun to clear the field. Underage labor in China is a lot more "Oliver Twist" than "The Waltons."
But let's consider your experience. Just because you and I have had hardscrabble lives, does that mean it was right, or does that mean we think our kids should follow in our footsteps? My grandfather never finished grade school. My father had a tractor roll over on him and shatter his leg in several places. He walked with a noticable limp for the rest of his life because of a lack of proper medical care. I can tell you in exquisite detail what blood and bone tastes like and what a shot fired in anger at your head sounds like as it whizzes by.
Sure, we're all badasses here. But is this what we want for our kids? I got a handful of my own, and if my boys went their entire lives without making a fist and meaning it, that would suit me just fine.
Maybe it was the time I spent as a teacher, maybe it the result of being a father for so long, but I find my paternal insticts grow as I get older. Little kids, whether they're mine or not, are little kids. I don't wanna hear about kids in China being worked to death in God-forsaken pits any more than I'd like to hear about the same being done to mine.
Menial factory work at least gives them something to do, even if their lives exist solely for someone else's profit.
Boom. There. Right there. There's your problem. If you're a fellow American, if you're a fellow member of Western Civilization, how does that not offend you to your core? "Their lives exist solely for someone else's profit" is the working definition of slavery. How can you possibly find this to be an acceptable situation?
Improvement of conditions, reasonable work hours via Government mandate
Which is how we ended child labor and instituted the 40 hour work week in this country, BTW...
Great, except that this will rise the cost of the products created and the costs will naturally be passed onto consumers in first-world countries.
Common misconception. Prices are set not by what the costs of production are but by what the market will bear. Ever hear a company say, "Our costs allow us to make a 300% markup, but we felt that amount of profit was unconscionable, so we marked the price down..."?Rising production costs don't get passed on to the consumer because the price is already set at the maximum the market will allow.
The electronics we buy are as cheap as they are precisely in a large part due to the slave work done in countries far away from us. Would people complain if prices went up as conditions in said countries improved? Damn right they would, unfortunately.
God Help Us, then let them complain. Let's call this the "Papa John" principle. When Papa John complained last month that providing his workers with healthcare would cost an extra quarter per pizza, the first thing that came to my mind was "Cool. You mean I can ensure my pizza guy doesn't have tuberculosis for an extra quarter? What can we get those poor guys if I kick in fifty cents?"
Seriously, if I pay an extra 20 bucks for my iPhone, I can eliminate slavery in China? Good grief. Bill me. If I kick in $40, can I free the North Koreans too?
The whole point of the elastic clause is to enable us to keep forming that "more perfect union."
That's why we eliminated slavery, despite it being enshrined 3/5ths of the way into the document. That why we established the air force, despite no mention of it made in the Constitution.
But leaving all the nit-picking aside, here's the real issue:
Are we going to take care of our own or not?
Are we going to leave the weakest among us to die in the gutter? Are we going to stuff our prisons full of people with schizophrenia, autism and Down's Syndrome? Are we going to follow Sparta, and bash out the brains of defective children, or are we going to find our humanity and care for those who cannot care for themselves?
Sure, but the question is, how do we -- as a society -- deal with our population of schizophrenics?
Do we put them in jail? Leave them to fend for themselves on the street? Or do we decide we are a civilized people and give them the help they need to live productive lives?
Yep, it's a real shame the country was founded by Hippies like us. Franklin and his free love obsession, Jefferson and his miscegenation, Washington's stalwart stance against Authoritarianism...
Seriouly, you need to read the document you're flailing around. "We the People," "Form a more perfect Union," "Establish Justice," "Secure Domestic Tranquility," "promote the General Welfare," limit military spending to two years, decentralized power structures, and a firm argument against including the Bill of Rights for fear that some "blockhead in the future," might think these were the only rights we had and not a merely listing of some of the more obvious ones.
The only thing those Hippies were missing was rock-n-roll. Sex was plentiful and both Jefferson and Washington grew hemp (marijuana) on their farms. Can you imagine how awesome our nation might have been if Beethoven had been born a mere 30 years earlier to complete the "Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-Roll" trifecta?
We had a name for Conservatives in 1776, and that name was "Tory." Our founding fathers were "black bloc" anti-corporate terrorists that got blitzed at the local tavern, dressed up and painted their faces like savages and dumped corporate property into the water like they were "Fight Club" members smashing Starbucks.
You got no right to wrap yourself in a flag until you're ready to ride through the night warning the undesireables that the cops are on their way....
It was easy to get them shut down, but it wasn't to save money, it was to improve "care" such as it was. The problem is there was no care and nobody wanted these people. Especially not in neighborhood centers like the one that was across from a large neighborhood park.
OK, so we're arguing we shut the programs down without replacing them because we were trying to improve care. Have we considered the theory that the bureaucrats and politicians used the accusations of gross misconduct and malpractice as political cover to simply stop funding mental health treatment? Especially considering the stated intention of the 1980s GOP to dismantle the "Great Society" programs?
I see in your other posts where you argue that we just don't have enough to go around, and even if we did, government is entirely incompetent to deal with anything, so simply taxing the rich won't fix our problems. OK, fair enough. The problem is that our nation's experience in the 40s, 50s and 60s contradict your stance. If the government is as incompetent as you argue, then why on Earth do we trust them with national defense?
We've been cutting taxes for 30 years, and instead of boosting employment, wages and employment have been falling like rocks. How about we try this as an experiment? Let's put taxes back where Man-Who-Defeated-Hitler-Republican-President Dwight D. Eisenhower put them. We put the new funds to work. We then refund education at the same rates Nixon did. We re-instate Glass-Steagal. We rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and then modernize it with the introduction of true fiber-to-the-curb. We lower the age of medicare coverage to 55... seconds before birth.:-)
Let's run that program for five years and see where we are.
In fact, "Ensuring Domestric Tranquility" and "Promoting the General Welfare" is right there in the first line of the first page. Sort of like they though it might be important, you know?
Think of it as working the problem from all sides.:-)
Anyway, here's where you, I and Bertrand Russell's ghost undoubtedly agree. I think it would be great if the Church would disengage from politics, rediscover humility, and go back to providing food, clothing, shelter and medicine to those in need. Yeah, I know it's not all you'd wish for, "last king and the entrails of the last priest" and all that, but surely we can agree that it's a start?
Now, apart from the flame war, what can we do for the poster? Can we find him the breathing room he medically needs, or do we literally kick him to the curb and then prison?
That's going to be a problem when he seeks a salaried job
Undoubtedly. So, what are we as a society going to do with our schizophrenics in particular, and the problem of mental illness in general?
Let's begin with the understanding that schizophrenia, like autism and Down's Syndrome, is an organic problem, where something physically went wrong with the body. It isn't the result of harsh circumstances like PTSD (also a very real and crippling problem) or a "learned behavior" like certain phobias. This means we can put schizophrenics right next to victims of childhood polio who can no longer walk. The disabilities they face aren't their "fault," and any "bootstrappy" behavior we might expect from them is right off the table. These people, who certainly can still live full, meaningful and productive lives, are simply going to need some help and consideration.
It's really unlikely that their condition is going to make them brilliant crimefighters.
This is supposed to be where the "compassionate" part of "compassionate conservative" kicks in, but unfortunately, it's actually the case that proves "compassionate conservative" is an oxymoron. They say the problem with mental illness is that it's "invisible," that it's harder for people to empathize with a schizophrenic than say, the blind, because mental illness doesn't show obvious trauma the way that MS does.
I'd be more inclined to agree if my state's schools for the blind and deaf didn't keep getting their funding slashed time and again. I can tell you from first-hand experience that my State's plan for the handicapped, despite an awesome amount of empty spin and window dressing, basically boils down to three choices; Family, Homelessness or Prison.
The people of the United States used to unanimously agree on this, that we had an obligation to care for and support the infirm, that a basic benchmark of civilization was that we took care of people who could not care for themselves. We lost that conviction sometime around the time when Reagan turned mental patients into homeless people, and then used that collection of homeless people to demonize the poor.
So, I guess the question I'm asking here is aimed at my fellow citizens and especially fellow Christians who identitfy as "conservatives." How about this guy? Schizophrenia. An actual medical problem, no fault of his own. Able to lead a productive life if we just shield him a little from the Darwinian bloodbath.
Can we get your heart to bleed at least a little bit for him? Can we set up a filthy Socialist program to make sure "the least of these" gets the help they need, or are we going to sit back and cheer as Ayn Rand slashes his throat?
They want captive audiences. Maybe I had an advantage seeing through the nonsense after spending so much time in Texas.
When oil prices are high, the oil executives chant "Free Market! Laissez-faire!" When oil prices drop, they demand the government step in to protect their profits, claiming that the government had a duty to protect national infrastructure from the vagaries of the market, that it would be wrong for the government to "Free-market them to death." (Good grief, how I miss Molly Ivins.)
The people in charge in this country believe in nothing but their own bank accounts, and will only wrap themselves in a flag or an ideology when it suits their purposes. This is much to the sorrow of Tea Party/Ron Paul supporters who just fell victim to the rule change that allows Mitt Romney to replace their grass-roots delegates with his wealthiest campaign supporters.
I'll lay off trying to get you and yours to pay your fair share of taxes if you'll do me one favor. Make good on the blood debt you owe me and mine. The next time the call goes out, how about you girls stop hiding behind your Mommy's skirts and your Daddy's money and actually enlist to fight the war you got us into? I'm pretty sure our disagreements will disappear with the first shot you hear.
Looking forward to having you on the team, And I promise not to razz you about all this too much later...
Slashdot Mirror
That's desperation and a horror right up there with the "Saw" movies.
We, as a people, in MY country, forced a young woman to work right into the grave. We might as well be Pharoahs running the blocks right over anyone who weakens and falls.
Why is it we can give pharmaceutical giant Amgen 500 billion dollars for free in the cliff deal, but we can't find a way to let a helpless young woman die in peace?
no one says that you are entitled to any specific standard of living.
My family's sweat and blood, spilled in the defense of this great nation, says differently. My family has not held the funerals we have held to watch this nation's manufacturing base handed over to the very thugs our previous generation just got through fighting.
Not only is taking advantage of an exploited labor market immoral, since handing money to our sworn enemies is pretty much the definition of treason as well.
Glad to see at least one other person remembers this "quaint" old idea.... :-)
What if the users explicitly agreed to this spying in their rental contracts?
Basic Contract Law would disallow this. Contracts are only valid when they are legal, mutual and entered into freely by people capable of a "meeting of minds." Contracts between two people of unequal understanding are void on their face. This is why you can't make contracts with children, the intoxicated or people of unsound mind. This is why the Courts generally protect "unsophisticated investors" from financial cardsharps, and why they take a very dim view of certain types of auto dealers who try to sell cars "as-is." It doesn't even have to be an "unconscionable contract," though I would argue that this case certainly would be. Any contract that obviously has one party taking advantage of the other is void on its face.
Think of it as the "Fair Fight" Principle. The Courts would generally allow Tyson and Ali in their prime to square off and call it "good." They wouldn't allow me to step in the ring with either, even if I agreed to it, because the Courts should not be in the business of providing legal cover to homicide.
$320/month lease, $700/month mortgage. You'll lose money either to rental costs, or (mortgage interest + mortgage insurance + taxes - mortgage tax deductions). The deciding numbers would be at the end of 20 years, does the equity in the home exceed the value of the $380/month savings you've been banking and investing for 20 years? In some cities right now, the equity is more. In other cities, the investment account is more.
I suspect the poster is talking about a long-term auto lease, which is a notoriously poor financial decision, as opposed to renting a car for a few days.
The concept you're looking for is "hubris." The guy's ego was writing checks his productivity couldn't cash. I worked with a really talented kid fresh out of school a while back. He'd been a big fish in a small pond his whole life, and couldn't fathom a world where some people might have more talent than he did, and worse yet, might be talented in different ways.
He kept insisting he was the only one competent to get this done, and that done, and the other thing until he finally met an old man who let him try.
The crackup was pretty spectacular.
Last I heard, the kid was doubling down on a bad strategy. Not sure what it's going to take to get the kid far enough past his own ego to work with other people.
But his time is running out.
What good is this SW if it only works under extremely specific circumstances?
Well, for one thing, you can bill the living daylights out of the government agency for providing it. And since each specific circumstance will likely require its own special patch, you have a guaranteed revenue stream for years to come...
Two liters of soda carries in the neighborhood of 800 calories. The usual number quoted is that running burns about 100-120 calories per mile. Roughly speaking, you're gonna pay for that two-liter soda with a seven mile run.
Need to gain weight fast? One pound of fat = 3500 extra calories. Roughly, eight or nine liters or four six-packs (22 cans) of soda equal one pound. Drink a six-pack a day and you'll be a pound, pound and a half heavier by the end of the week. You'll be four or five pounds overweight by the end of the month. You can be grossly clinically obese by the end of the year, simply from drinking soda alone.
Now, yeah, I get personal freedom and, no, we shouldn't ban bacon and candy, but I have a lot of sympathy for the noise coming out of New York about banning soda. I was raised to think soda was basically "Water Plus," and the Coca Cola Company spent billions programming me to think "Coke Is It." I mean, good grief, we literally get our picture of Santa Claus from a Coca Cola ad, so deep is soda ingrained in American culture.
It took a ridiculous amount of effort as an adult to look at a can of soda and link that to feeling bad from poor health. It was ridiculous how hard it was to teach myself that I should look at a can of Coke and a cigarette the same way, since both would have roughly comparable deleterious effects on my health.
Some individuals would probably be just fine drinking 2L of sugar soda from plastic bottles if they're active enough to burn off the extra calories.
No one, nobody, is going to stay fine if they're drinking two liters of soda a day.
A meteor impact wiping out 80% of all species on the planet you could deem damaging to the ecosystem, it's still a natural occurence, life still finds a way and the world still turns.
Sure, on geologic timescales. Interestingly enough, it's the larger, more dominant predators most at risk to such an event. Know anyone at the top of the food chain you'd like to keep around?
Seriously though, if you don't define a meteor strike like the one that killed the dinosaurs to be a disaster, then the simple fact is that the word "disaster" holds no meaning for you. There is literally nothing up to and including the aforementioned "red giant" phase of the sun that will one day engulf the Earth that you find to be a problem.
Meanwhile, my concerns are a bit more immediate.
China doesn't have an adversarial and independent press (though God knows it could be argued the US doesn't have one anymore either). When things like this happen, the best you're going to get are strangled, scattered reports in fitful sporadic bursts, as happened in our own (US) revolution.
Responsible journalism would involve a reporter going out to investigate the reports and interview the people on the scene. The government won't allow it. So now you're in a similar situation where the police get a call about a wife beater. They go to the accused man's house and find there's blood on his sleeveless t-shirt, they can hear sobbing inside, but he won't let them in the door. Suddenly you have to take those few scattered reports a lot more seriously.
Various students are reporting they've been pressed into service by a dictatorial government. The dictatorial government in question isn't allowing anyone to investigate their claims. The government's behavior in and of itself tends to corroborate the students' reports, especially given the previous history of the factory in question.
Students were pulled from their classes, forced to work 12-hour shifts, and punished if they protested or tried to leave. None of this was voluntary, and all of it highly illegal even by Chinese law. The students were paid a very nominal amount, but were billed for room and board which clawed that money right back to the factory, meaning this is a "Sixteen Tons" situation where the students didn't actually get paid.
As for the "work experience," it consisted of snapping parts together and filling boxes. The students were studying Law and English. The factory work had no educational value of any kind, not are any of the students getting the references or connections customarily associated with internships.
Are you getting this yet? The students were grabbed from school, shipped to the factory and made to work 12-hour shifts. No one had agreed to any of this. Anyone who talked back or tried to leave was punished.
The nicest label you can slap on this is "impressment," which is just a fancy way of saying slavery. So let me get this straight. A national healthcare plan is "enslaving doctors," but grabbing kids out of class and forcing them to work 12-hour shifts without pay is "valuable work experience?"
...and there are precious few of us old school conservatives left who remember "Rio Bravo." If you'd hold a rich man in jail despite deadly opposition because you believe in the Rule of Law, you're a John Wayne conservative.
If you oppose one man monopolizing the water and land rights in town, you're a John Wayne conservative.
If you believe that we all -- even the drunks and the handicapped -- should work together toward a common good, you're a John Wayne conservative.
If you believe even addicts and convicts deserve a second chance, you're a John Wayne conservative.
If you believe Jesus died for our sins and that we're all undeserving of His grace, and that how we treat "the least of these" is how we treat Him, then you're a John Wayne conservative.
The problem is Paul Ryan's GOP thinks you're a pinko socialist.
Go ahead. Walk into a gathering of your fellow faux conservatives and say the following: "I believe that people who commit a crime should go to jail. Lying on a sworn court document is perjury. Any banker who 'robo-signed' documents should be in prison." Let me know how that goes.
Walk into your nearest Assembly of God church and try the following line: "I believe Christians should go, sell all that they have, give to the poor, and follow Him." Follow that up with a suggestion that Christians should spend most of their time among brawlers, whores and thieves (Peter, Mary, Zacchaeus). If you really want to wind them up, try quoting Barbara Ehrenreich describing our Lord as "a wine-guzzling vagrant," which is pretty much a direct quote from how Christ described himself. It's amazing how many of my brethren balk at that blunt and clever turn of phrase, and totally miss the scathing indictment she makes about our lack of Faith.
I spent my little boys years in Huck Finn territory, and I grew up among men with rough hands and hard lives. I spent my Sundays in literal clapboard churches on wooden pews. When the men I grew up with had time for a movie, it was usually John Wayne.
And I cannot reconcile the classic American values found in those movies with the Ebenezer Scrooge beliefs of the modern Republican party.
Hey Farm Boy,
You and I probably have similar blue-collar backgrounds and work histories, and I have the scars on my back and face to prove it. We're not talking about kids there feeding the goats and collecting eggs. We're not talking about the double-bit ax I was handed at eight years old. We're talking situations closer to ones we had in America, where we sent small children into coal mines because it was cheaper to dig exploratory tunnels that could only fit little kids instead of a full-grown man. A lot of those little boys didn't make it out when their makeshift tunnels collapsed on them. Underage labor in China doesn't mean we sent the kid out under the Texas sun to clear the field. Underage labor in China is a lot more "Oliver Twist" than "The Waltons."
But let's consider your experience. Just because you and I have had hardscrabble lives, does that mean it was right, or does that mean we think our kids should follow in our footsteps? My grandfather never finished grade school. My father had a tractor roll over on him and shatter his leg in several places. He walked with a noticable limp for the rest of his life because of a lack of proper medical care. I can tell you in exquisite detail what blood and bone tastes like and what a shot fired in anger at your head sounds like as it whizzes by.
Sure, we're all badasses here. But is this what we want for our kids? I got a handful of my own, and if my boys went their entire lives without making a fist and meaning it, that would suit me just fine.
Maybe it was the time I spent as a teacher, maybe it the result of being a father for so long, but I find my paternal insticts grow as I get older. Little kids, whether they're mine or not, are little kids. I don't wanna hear about kids in China being worked to death in God-forsaken pits any more than I'd like to hear about the same being done to mine.
Menial factory work at least gives them something to do, even if their lives exist solely for someone else's profit.
Boom. There. Right there. There's your problem. If you're a fellow American, if you're a fellow member of Western Civilization, how does that not offend you to your core? "Their lives exist solely for someone else's profit" is the working definition of slavery. How can you possibly find this to be an acceptable situation?
Improvement of conditions, reasonable work hours via Government mandate
Which is how we ended child labor and instituted the 40 hour work week in this country, BTW...
Great, except that this will rise the cost of the products created and the costs will naturally be passed onto consumers in first-world countries.
Common misconception. Prices are set not by what the costs of production are but by what the market will bear. Ever hear a company say, "Our costs allow us to make a 300% markup, but we felt that amount of profit was unconscionable, so we marked the price down..."?Rising production costs don't get passed on to the consumer because the price is already set at the maximum the market will allow.
The electronics we buy are as cheap as they are precisely in a large part due to the slave work done in countries far away from us. Would people complain if prices went up as conditions in said countries improved? Damn right they would, unfortunately.
God Help Us, then let them complain. Let's call this the "Papa John" principle. When Papa John complained last month that providing his workers with healthcare would cost an extra quarter per pizza, the first thing that came to my mind was "Cool. You mean I can ensure my pizza guy doesn't have tuberculosis for an extra quarter? What can we get those poor guys if I kick in fifty cents?"
Seriously, if I pay an extra 20 bucks for my iPhone, I can eliminate slavery in China? Good grief. Bill me. If I kick in $40, can I free the North Koreans too?
The whole point of the elastic clause is to enable us to keep forming that "more perfect union."
That's why we eliminated slavery, despite it being enshrined 3/5ths of the way into the document. That why we established the air force, despite no mention of it made in the Constitution.
But leaving all the nit-picking aside, here's the real issue:
Are we going to take care of our own or not?
Are we going to leave the weakest among us to die in the gutter? Are we going to stuff our prisons full of people with schizophrenia, autism and Down's Syndrome? Are we going to follow Sparta, and bash out the brains of defective children, or are we going to find our humanity and care for those who cannot care for themselves?
Sure, but the question is, how do we -- as a society -- deal with our population of schizophrenics?
Do we put them in jail? Leave them to fend for themselves on the street? Or do we decide we are a civilized people and give them the help they need to live productive lives?
Yep, it's a real shame the country was founded by Hippies like us. Franklin and his free love obsession, Jefferson and his miscegenation, Washington's stalwart stance against Authoritarianism...
Seriouly, you need to read the document you're flailing around. "We the People," "Form a more perfect Union," "Establish Justice," "Secure Domestic Tranquility," "promote the General Welfare," limit military spending to two years, decentralized power structures, and a firm argument against including the Bill of Rights for fear that some "blockhead in the future," might think these were the only rights we had and not a merely listing of some of the more obvious ones.
The only thing those Hippies were missing was rock-n-roll. Sex was plentiful and both Jefferson and Washington grew hemp (marijuana) on their farms. Can you imagine how awesome our nation might have been if Beethoven had been born a mere 30 years earlier to complete the "Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-Roll" trifecta?
We had a name for Conservatives in 1776, and that name was "Tory." Our founding fathers were "black bloc" anti-corporate terrorists that got blitzed at the local tavern, dressed up and painted their faces like savages and dumped corporate property into the water like they were "Fight Club" members smashing Starbucks.
You got no right to wrap yourself in a flag until you're ready to ride through the night warning the undesireables that the cops are on their way....
It was easy to get them shut down, but it wasn't to save money, it was to improve "care" such as it was. The problem is there was no care and nobody wanted these people. Especially not in neighborhood centers like the one that was across from a large neighborhood park.
OK, so we're arguing we shut the programs down without replacing them because we were trying to improve care. Have we considered the theory that the bureaucrats and politicians used the accusations of gross misconduct and malpractice as political cover to simply stop funding mental health treatment? Especially considering the stated intention of the 1980s GOP to dismantle the "Great Society" programs?
I see in your other posts where you argue that we just don't have enough to go around, and even if we did, government is entirely incompetent to deal with anything, so simply taxing the rich won't fix our problems. OK, fair enough. The problem is that our nation's experience in the 40s, 50s and 60s contradict your stance. If the government is as incompetent as you argue, then why on Earth do we trust them with national defense?
We've been cutting taxes for 30 years, and instead of boosting employment, wages and employment have been falling like rocks. How about we try this as an experiment? Let's put taxes back where Man-Who-Defeated-Hitler-Republican-President Dwight D. Eisenhower put them. We put the new funds to work. We then refund education at the same rates Nixon did. We re-instate Glass-Steagal. We rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and then modernize it with the introduction of true fiber-to-the-curb. We lower the age of medicare coverage to 55 ... seconds before birth. :-)
Let's run that program for five years and see where we are.
In fact, "Ensuring Domestric Tranquility" and "Promoting the General Welfare" is right there in the first line of the first page. Sort of like they though it might be important, you know?
The sad commentary on our times is that I can't tell if this is a troll or someone's legitimate belief...
Think of it as working the problem from all sides. :-)
Anyway, here's where you, I and Bertrand Russell's ghost undoubtedly agree. I think it would be great if the Church would disengage from politics, rediscover humility, and go back to providing food, clothing, shelter and medicine to those in need. Yeah, I know it's not all you'd wish for, "last king and the entrails of the last priest" and all that, but surely we can agree that it's a start?
Now, apart from the flame war, what can we do for the poster? Can we find him the breathing room he medically needs, or do we literally kick him to the curb and then prison?
That's going to be a problem when he seeks a salaried job
Undoubtedly. So, what are we as a society going to do with our schizophrenics in particular, and the problem of mental illness in general?
Let's begin with the understanding that schizophrenia, like autism and Down's Syndrome, is an organic problem, where something physically went wrong with the body. It isn't the result of harsh circumstances like PTSD (also a very real and crippling problem) or a "learned behavior" like certain phobias. This means we can put schizophrenics right next to victims of childhood polio who can no longer walk. The disabilities they face aren't their "fault," and any "bootstrappy" behavior we might expect from them is right off the table. These people, who certainly can still live full, meaningful and productive lives, are simply going to need some help and consideration.
It's really unlikely that their condition is going to make them brilliant crimefighters.
This is supposed to be where the "compassionate" part of "compassionate conservative" kicks in, but unfortunately, it's actually the case that proves "compassionate conservative" is an oxymoron. They say the problem with mental illness is that it's "invisible," that it's harder for people to empathize with a schizophrenic than say, the blind, because mental illness doesn't show obvious trauma the way that MS does.
I'd be more inclined to agree if my state's schools for the blind and deaf didn't keep getting their funding slashed time and again. I can tell you from first-hand experience that my State's plan for the handicapped, despite an awesome amount of empty spin and window dressing, basically boils down to three choices; Family, Homelessness or Prison.
The people of the United States used to unanimously agree on this, that we had an obligation to care for and support the infirm, that a basic benchmark of civilization was that we took care of people who could not care for themselves. We lost that conviction sometime around the time when Reagan turned mental patients into homeless people, and then used that collection of homeless people to demonize the poor.
So, I guess the question I'm asking here is aimed at my fellow citizens and especially fellow Christians who identitfy as "conservatives." How about this guy? Schizophrenia. An actual medical problem, no fault of his own. Able to lead a productive life if we just shield him a little from the Darwinian bloodbath.
Can we get your heart to bleed at least a little bit for him? Can we set up a filthy Socialist program to make sure "the least of these" gets the help they need, or are we going to sit back and cheer as Ayn Rand slashes his throat?
They want captive audiences. Maybe I had an advantage seeing through the nonsense after spending so much time in Texas.
When oil prices are high, the oil executives chant "Free Market! Laissez-faire!" When oil prices drop, they demand the government step in to protect their profits, claiming that the government had a duty to protect national infrastructure from the vagaries of the market, that it would be wrong for the government to "Free-market them to death." (Good grief, how I miss Molly Ivins.)
The people in charge in this country believe in nothing but their own bank accounts, and will only wrap themselves in a flag or an ideology when it suits their purposes. This is much to the sorrow of Tea Party/Ron Paul supporters who just fell victim to the rule change that allows Mitt Romney to replace their grass-roots delegates with his wealthiest campaign supporters.
I'll lay off trying to get you and yours to pay your fair share of taxes if you'll do me one favor. Make good on the blood debt you owe me and mine. The next time the call goes out, how about you girls stop hiding behind your Mommy's skirts and your Daddy's money and actually enlist to fight the war you got us into? I'm pretty sure our disagreements will disappear with the first shot you hear.
Looking forward to having you on the team,
And I promise not to razz you about all this too much later...